Review Haiku – The Right Stuff

It’s nearly the end of the year, and it looks like some films on Netflix Instant Streaming are about to go away. This happens throughout the year; Netflix has contracts to allow them to stream films, but the contracts expire from time to time. When they do, Netflix stops streaming them. Normally, when this happens, it’s only a few films at a time. Yesterday, I noticed 19 films from my Instant Streaming queue are going away at the end of the year. Sine they’re in my queue, I wanted to see them, thus the movie marathon.

Before the end of the year, in a few days, I plan on watching as many of them as possible. The list is below, and the ones in italics are the ones I’ve already watched.

The 39 Steps (1935)
Nymphoid Barbarian in Dinosaur Hell
Timecop
The Sheltering Sky
The Omega Man
The Street Fighter
CQ
Sex and the Single Girl
The Way of the Gun
Class of Nuke ‘Em High
Femme Fatale
Giant
Dangerous Beauty
Cleopatra Jones
Eros
Sgt. Kabukiman, NYPD
Paradise Now
Eve’s Beach Fantasy
Happenstance

Aside from those I’ve already watched, they’re in no particular order. I’ll probably watch happenstance sooner, since that goes away a day sooner than the others.

Also, I’m on break from work and full of caffeine, for what it’s worth. It’s a bit like a film festival in my own home. ;-)

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Review Haiku – Cambridge Spies

Posted on December 27, 2011

Privileged and naïve
Four Cambridge students become
Traitors to themselves

Cambridge Spies at Rotten Tomatoes
Cambridge Spies at IMDB
Cambridge Spies at Amazon

Rating:

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Tagged with: 2003, 4 stars, based on a true story, betrayal, cambridge, cold war, france, london, period film, Review Haiku, secret agent, spain, television, Tim FYWELL, treason, united kingdom, united states, war film, washington dc

Review Haiku – Tommy

Posted on December 26, 2011

Deaf, dumb, and blind kid
He sure plays a mean pinball
Becomes an icon

Tommy at Rotten Tomatoes
Tommy at IMDB
Tommy at Amazon

Rating:

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Tagged with: 1975, 3 stars, drug use, Ken RUSSELL, mental illness, movie review, musical, prostitution, religion, Review Haiku, united kingdom

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Posted on December 25, 2011

For all the films I watch on DVD, it’s rare that I go to the theater. I think the last film I saw in a theater before tonight was Tron: Legacy (also the first and last time I’ll see a film in 3D). Tonight I saw David Fincher’s version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and I’m a bit disappointed.

It’s not that it’s a bad film. It was pretty good, but I think that having read the book and seen the Swedish version of the film, they sort of took the wind out of my sails when seeing this new version. I knew what was going to happen, so the suspense wasn’t there.

I’m not going to do a Review Haiku on the film yet. There are still plenty in queue ahead of it, so it has to wait its turn. Apart from that, here are a few things to note while they’re still fresh in my mind:

The opening credit sequence was great. It seems like an odd thing to rave about, but it reminded me of the James Bond opening credit sequences, which is a bit ironic considering Daniel Craig was the star of this film in addition to being the star of the most recent Bond films.

I counted at least two points where the film diverged from the book. These were minor points, so they may have been dropped for the lack of time. It didn’t hurt the story in any way, but they did make it into the Swedish film. Just sayin’.

I respect Daniel Craig’s acting ability, but would it have killed him to adopt a Swedish accent? Christopher Plummer seemed to make an effort at it, and Rooney Mara’s accent made her performance more believable.

Despite being mildly disappointed with the film, I will be greatly disappointed if they don’t make the other books into films using the same actors. I think trilogies are more satisfying if they keep the same actors. It would be difficult to imagine The Lords of the Rings trilogy having the same heft if Frodo was played by different actors in different films.

Also, I think the other two books are more compelling storywise. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo brings Blomkvist and Salander together, but The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest bring a lot more to the characters. It would be a shame if the trilogy wasn’t finished.

EDIT After writing this post, I came across this article about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo at the BBC. In it, Daniel Craig talks about the decision not to adopt a Swedish accent for the film. The justification is that many Swedish people speak English with English accents.

This seems like a good argument on the face of it, but when you get down to the context of the story, most of these characters will be speaking Swedish to each other, not English. The few scenes that take place in London, the characters may have spoken English, but for most of the story, they would have spoken Swedish. It would have been interesting if Daniel Craig and Joely Richardson adopted British accents for scenes in London and Swedish accents for scenes in Sweden.

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Tagged with: accent reduction, movie review